There’s a certain somebody I run across every week who makes my day. I see her in a local coffee shop, which gets crowded on weekends. We have a brief conversation, exchange pleasantries, and then move on. I asked her yesterday if the cap I was wearing made me look stupid. She laughed and told me I looked refined. I can tell she enjoys the interaction, as do I. I have even begun to look forward to them every Saturday. Is there flirting involved? Of course, but it’s not the heavy-handed kind you might find in other settings like a bar or nightclub. Ours is purely playful flirting not intended to achieve an objective. Still, it has the underlying rhythm and tension of a dance.
There is a reason for my taking time out to write about this person even as the world falls apart around us. Writing about her helps me with the wider, societal situation, because it takes my mind off the theater of the absurd we’re living in and raises it to a higher level. If you’re one of the Marxists, you’ll think that flirting and coffee shop banter are distracting me from the real work of fighting systems of oppression, but I am content to sit, sip, and stare.
Actually, I try not to stare. That’s the last thing I need. I have been told that I stare too much, but I’ve been working on it for a while now. Riding the subway in New York City for ten years cures you pdq of staring. You learn the art of conspicuous disengagement while at the same time remaining aware of everything that goes on around you. It’s quite a skill, which may have helped me hone my flirting for the coffee shop.
Here’s the thing. I’ll come right out and say it. This person has the most beautiful eyes I have seen in a long time. They are deep brown and shine with a light that seems to come not from without but within. It’s as if an inner source were illuminating her eyes and flowing out to the world around her. I know that the eyes are the light of the soul (Matthew 6:22-23), but rarely have I experienced this in anything other than an icon or work of religious art. To experience it in a person as part of her natural presence is not just uplifting but makes me want to flirt with her even more. Well, if not that, at least to ask for a refill.
You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
This reminds me of Ernest Hemingway, who advised writers to be ruthless with other people and the demands they can make on your time and schedule. I follow his advice, more so now that I am retired, and see the need to tell people “no” early and often, as the joke about voting goes. So, in writing you have to remove obstacles and distractions to focus and get your best work done. But the best writing happens, Hemingway says, when you’re in love.
I don’t claim to be in love. But I have to admit that everything changes once you start looking forward to Saturday morning and meeting that certain somebody if only for a moment. Her smile, the light in her eyes, her eagerness to meet me halfway in flirting–all of it changes the fundamental experience of life. In a word, it makes it better. So, I would say that not only the best writing but the best living happens when you’re in love. I’m not the first one to figure this out.
I feel the need to close with a tablespoon of reality. I have experienced this before and am well aware that the work starts once you get so used to that inner light that you crave more and more of it like an addict. There also comes a time when that light turns into a glare across the breakfast table. So, I don’t mean to objectify this woman or make an idol of romantic love. I simply enjoy being around her and how she makes my cappuccino taste. She’s better than cinnamon.
Image credits: feature by Steve Johnson; woman by Alexander Krivitskiy. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”
